“It’s nice to see a friendly face.”
“He stays all day. I can’t seem to get rid of him. He parks himself at the tasting counter and yaks my ear off all day long about taxidermy.” Jade plucked an apricot from the basket and bit down on it with enough force to snap a perfectly whitened tooth.
“So you decided if you couldn’t get rid of him you could put him to work? There must be something else you could have had him do to be helpful. Running errands, that sort of thing.”
“I tried but he wasn’t taking the hint, wouldn’t consider budging until I mentioned visiting Greener Pastures.” Jade threw off the blanket she’d cocooned herself in and stood.
“So you sent him to me?” I paused, a bit of chocolate halfway to my lips. “That wasn’t a great way to get on my good side.”
“I was desperate. Yesterday morning he told me how he would pose me if I were stuffed.”
“I’m sure he meant it as a compliment,” I said.
“I don’t see how.”
“I expect he wanted to preserve your lifelike beauty.”
I had to agree with her about the creepiness. I had often suspected some of Knowlton’s daydreams involved posing Celadon and me in cheerful domestic scenes neither of us would have participated in while alive. I wondered if he was just so enraptured with Jade that he completely forgot himself or if the situation with Tansey had sent him over the edge.
“He’s driving me batty. It’s almost enough to make me regret opening the winery.” Jade poured herself another glass of wine and looked like she was prepared to drown her sorrows.
“So you hadn’t factored him into your business plan?”
“No. He was not any part of any of my plans. With the way he has been talking taxidermy at the winery I’m afraid he is going to drive off business. Roadkill is hardly the sort of pairing I had in mind for my wines.”
“So what you really want is to be able to send Knowlton on a sap-collecting run to Greener Pastures any time you want to get him out of your hair?”
“That’s right. I just need him off my premises for a few hours each day.” Jade’s eyes were taking on a feverish sheen. I hated to be the one to burst her bubble.
“But how will that get him out of your hair? With one trip I can supply you with enough sap to more than meet your needs.”
“He doesn’t know that though, does he? I’ll send him every day for a bit at a time. He won’t know any better if I tell him the sap has to be harvested fresh daily to make the best wine.”
“I’ll agree under one condition.”
“I’m desperate enough to agree to almost anything.”
“We sit down and calmly discuss how much sap each of us needs for our businesses and how much there is available.”
“Okay. Done.”
“Not quite. You are going to have to put in some time in the sugar bush learning what goes into making the sap ready for Knowlton to pick up.”
“Agreed.”
“I’m still not done. I also want to pick your brain for some tips for the sugarhouse retail shop and I want to brainstorm some crossover marketing between our two businesses.”
“That’s a great idea. I can just see it all now. Gift baskets, tastings at both shops, really highlighting the close-knit family angle.” Jade jumped up off the couch and grabbed her jacket. “I’m going to go home and get thinking about this right away.” Before I could say another word she was gone, leaving her basket of goodies on the table.
I helped myself to another cracker with chutney and wondered about how in the world the problem of Knowlton could possibly have set my relationship with Jade on a new and better path.
Twenty-five
Even though I hadn’t wanted to provoke unwanted attention from Mitch I decided I’d better risk talking to his father. I found Gary up in the opera house, tinkering with a radiator. He looked up when he saw me and I wasn’t sure if his frown was for me personally or if he wasn’t happy to be interrupted.
“What brings you by, Dani? I would have thought you’d be out straight with the sugaring at this time of year.” Gary pawed through his toolbox and lifted out an adjustable wrench.
“I have been busy but you know how much of a priority the opera house restoration is to the family. I felt like I had to make time to ask how things were going with the furnace upgrade.”
“This mess sure has managed to make that job bigger.” Gary gestured up at the ceiling. As positive as the impact of temperature changes is on sap in my maple trees, water in pipes has a whole different attitude to below-freezing temperatures.
Just as the sugaring season was set to begin the pipes in the opera house portion of the town hall building had frozen and burst. Water had started streaming into the plaster walls of the opera house and down into the ceiling of the floors below.
Pipes all over town had frozen and every decent repairperson had worked almost around the clock. Gary had been working nonstop himself for a couple of weeks. Since the opera house wasn’t being used while the renovations were being done we had agreed that he should prioritize repairs in townspeople’s homes.
The plaster ceilings that had been damaged were a thing of beauty before the water got to them. Flowers and vines and stars wrapped around light fixtures and traced the openings of the stairways. It was a glorious old building and it broke my heart to see it damaged so badly.
“I don’t know what’s going to be able to be done about the ceilings but if anyone can get the pipes straightened out I’m sure it’s you.” I wasn’t just sweet-talking Gary to soften him up. He was great at his job. People had trusted their plumbing and heating systems to him for years. Almost exactly as many years as it had been since Spooner disappeared. “After all, you’ve been tending to this heating system for years, haven’t you?”
“I was an apprentice when the last system went in at the town hall. That was a big job, too, but at least the plaster wasn’t affected that time.”
“So you must have gone into the business just about the time you and Theresa were thinking about getting married.”
“That’s right. I wanted to have a steady job with decent pay if I was going to have a family, and my father gave me some good advice. He said there wasn’t ever going to be a lack of need for furnaces in New Hampshire and that pipes always managed to get themselves frozen.”
“Sounds like a smart guy.”
“About some things he was. I liked working with my hands and my mother’s brother owned a plumbing and heating business.”
“That was lucky.”
“It was. I started working as a part-time grunt work guy during the summers when I was in high school. When I graduated my uncle hired me on full-time and I started learning the trade in earnest.”
“How long was it before you went into business for yourself?”
“Years. I worked for my uncle well into my thirties and then he decided to retire and I bought his business from him. I was hoping Mitch would want to follow in my footsteps but he was more interested in joining the police force.” Gary shook his head and tossed the wrench back into his toolbox with a clang.
“If it helps, I wish he hadn’t decided to be a cop either.” With Mitch’s general interest in ticketing me for everything from jaywalking to breathing too loudly I would have much preferred him to work in the plumbing and heating industry.
“I was always sorry things didn’t work out for the two of you but you can’t pick a spouse for your kids any more than you can choose a job for them.”
“I think it’s best when the people most involved are left to their own devices. Look at you and Theresa for example. The two of you have been happily married forever and I understood you were high school sweethearts. I don’t expect your families orchestrated that.”
“Nope. I’d known Theresa practically all my life but it wasn’t until third-peri
od geometry class that I really noticed her. I almost flunked the course from spending so much time trying to get her attention instead of paying attention to the teacher.”
“Theresa told me you got married only a few months after she graduated from high school.”
“We did. I had proposed while she was in her senior year and she had accepted but wasn’t wearing the ring because she didn’t want her mother to know how serious things had gotten. Her mother was very protective of Theresa and her reputation.”
“I’ve heard you were pretty protective of her, too.” I held my breath and hoped Gary wasn’t going to be offended and stop talking.
“Sounds like you’ve heard about Spooner Duffy.” Gary stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. Mitch had gotten his height from his father. I could feel the way Gary was looming over me and the thought crossed my mind that asking him irritating questions without a witness might have been a bad idea.
“His body being found has brought up a lot of old memories.”
“And old gossip. I suppose people are saying I had a key to the town hall and was angry about the way Spooner kept chasing Theresa.”
“It has been mentioned.”
“Are you the one doing the mentioning?”
“No. I’m just trying to get the restoration job back under way so I can focus on my sugaring.”
“Then I suggest you stop distracting me with old nonsense and let me get back to work on the task at hand.” Gary started to turn his back on me like he was done talking. I figured there was little to lose in aggravating him further so I decided to push my luck.
“Does that mean you didn’t kill Spooner and bury him under a pile of coal in the basement?”
“It means that even if I did I wouldn’t have time to tell you about it and to repair the plumbing. If you keep pestering me and insulting me I might just decide I’m too busy to work on this job at all.” With that he pointed to the door.
* * *
If I wanted to be able to question Frances about her finances or any knowledge she might have had concerning Spooner’s unfortunate demise, I had to get her to agree to see me once more. After the disastrous end to our last meeting I needed something quite convincing to get her to allow me back into her apartment. Fortunately, I knew just the thing.
My apartment door was only one of two at the top of the stairs leading up from the back room at Stems and Hems. The other led to a storage area where Frances had left her scrapbooks and other bulky items she still valued but had no room for at Dappled Oaks. If I appeared at her door carrying the albums she had mentioned wanting returned I doubted she would refuse to see me. It was just as possible she wouldn’t remember she had been angry with me in the first place.
I tried the knob on the storage room and even though it squeaked, it turned. The door swung open easily. I stepped inside and was able to imagine how my apartment would have looked before the interior walls had been added. Sloping attic ceilings brought nails protruding roughly through to the roof to secure the shingles so low they nearly scraped my head.
Unlike my apartment this space had no dormers and only very small windows cut into the gable end. I made my way through stacks and stacks of boxes and finally found a few with Frances’s name written on the outside in bold black letters. I found the albums in the second one I opened.
I clutched the albums tightly to my chest as I picked my way back through the gloom. It wouldn’t endear me to Frances if I damaged something that meant so much to her. Back in the apartment I wrapped the albums in plastic shopping bags and then slid them into a sturdy canvas tote bag. After grabbing a snack and running a brush through my hair I was ready to head off to visit Frances once more.
I checked in at Dappled Oaks’ front desk and made my way to Frances’s apartment. I had barely landed a blow on the door when she yanked it open as wide as the chain would allow. The thought crossed my mind that she was paranoid enough that she stood all day with her eye pressed to the peephole, keeping a watch on the hallway.
“I’m not buying any of your Squirrel Squad taffy. I just had a crown repaired,” Frances said through the narrow opening. Well, at least she remembered me enough to link me with my Squirrel Squad fund-raising days. I’d like to think I looked older than I had in my gray uniform but the truth was, I probably didn’t.
“I haven’t come about the squirrels. I’ve brought you your albums from the storage area at Stems and Hems.” I pulled one out and carefully unwrapped it before holding it up for her to see. She pressed her face against the crack and I saw her eye widen in recognition. A second later I heard the chain sliding in its track and Frances’s hand clutched my arm and dragged me inside.
“Where did you say you found these?” Frances sat at the little table in the kitchenette and held out her hands for the albums. I placed them gently, one at a time, in front of her. She opened a photo album first and peered at the faces smiling up at her from the pages.
“In the storage area above Stems and Hems. Right where you told me they’d be. They were in a storage box.”
“My memory isn’t what it used to be, you know,” Frances said, turning the pages of her album. “But when I look at these photos I remember the things in them like it was yesterday.” I sat next to her and looked at the photo she was pointing at.
“Are these members of your family?” I asked.
“They are. This whole album is of my parents and cousins and even aunts and grandparents. All of them gone now. There’s just me left.” Frances looked around the apartment and for a moment I thought she would cry. Then she turned to the other album. “This one is of other people and events.” She closed her family album and pulled the one filled with friends toward her.
“Does it include any photos of the maple festival?” I asked.
“Most of the photos were of the festival. It was my favorite event every year. And the scrapbook is full of memorabilia like programs and ticket stubs. I even made notes about the weather and jotted down things that went well or things we’d want to do differently the next year.”
“What a great idea. Would you show me? I might want to try something like that myself since I’m on the festival committee now.”
“Of course. Here is an entry from 1968. Look at all the men in their hats. I always think a man in a hat looks so dapper. Don’t you?” Frances traced her finger over a photo of a group of men. I leaned in for a better look and recognized my grandfather and Doc. Both smiled out at the camera, their faces not so lined as they were now.
“They certainly do look distinguished. How many years does the scrapbook cover?”
“I added to it for a long time. See.” Frances flipped through the album and stopped three-quarters of the way through. “This is the year Theresa won the Miss Maple pageant. I had just started training her at the bank about a week or so before the festival.”
“She looks so happy,” I said. The photo of Theresa showed a beautiful young woman with a dazzling smile. It was easy to see why as a young pageant contestant Jade had idolized her and had wanted to follow in her footsteps.
“She was. She worked so hard on her talent even practicing during her lunch break at the bank to be ready.”
“What was her talent?” I never had thought to ask. Jade’s obsession with the pageant had kind of turned me off to the whole thing.
“She did an escape artist routine where she had to pick the lock on a set of handcuffs and get out of a wooden cabinet blindfolded. The judges loved it.”
“I’ll bet they did.” It was funny Theresa hadn’t mentioned her ability to pick locks as one of the reasons Preston suspected her in the theft. After all, Karen’s desk drawer lock had been picked.
Frances leafed a few pages ahead. “And here is the last one of that year. I took it of Tansey, Jim, and Spooner after the festival ended and we were collecting up the earnings.”
I looked closely at that one. It was my first look at Spooner, well at least at more than a few bits of his bones. He was the spitting image of Knowlton and I wondered how Tansey ever thought she had kept his parentage a secret from anyone who remembered Spooner.
Even in the photo it was easy to see Tansey wasn’t well. Jim looked like himself only without the slight paunch he now had and with a full head of hair that he didn’t possess anymore.
“Spooner was with you when you were handling the money raised from the festival?”
“He was an enormous help that year. I don’t know what we would have done without him.”
“What kind of things did he do for you?”
“A little of everything. He hung signs and manned one of the parking lots. He did a lot of work setting up the booths along Main Street in the days leading up to the event. He even offered to take the money to the town hall since he was heading there anyway.” Frances turned the page and started to talk about the next year when I stopped her.
“Spooner was the one who was in charge of taking the money to the town hall?” This was the first I had heard of that. Even Preston and Lowell hadn’t said anything about it. And, strangely enough, neither had Tansey. “Are you certain about that?” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice but I don’t think I managed to.
“Oh dear, I think I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that.” Frances snapped the album shut and shoved back her chair.
“Why weren’t you supposed to tell anyone? Was it because that was the year the money went missing?”
“I knew you were a spy. I want you to go.” It looked like our visit was over. Without another word Frances grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to the door. “And I don’t want you to come back.” With that, she shoved me out and slammed the door shut behind me. If I wanted answers it was clear I was going to have to ask someone else.
* * *
I decided to ask Jim for confirmation of Frances’s story about Spooner and the deposit money. After all, Frances wasn’t the most reliable source of information. And he seemed like an easier person to talk to about it than Tansey. She’d been through a lot already and if Frances was just misremembering the details, there was no reason to upset her about anything else.
A Sticky Situation Page 18
